Jonesing towards Bethlehem?

… before we get going, this chap would like to point out the possibility that though our readers might have heard of Alex Jones and Infowars, they might have missed out on his recent Performance Art defence. In itself – arguably – some of his best performance art. Then of course, this chap is not the expert on that particular topic.

Meanwhile …

Graham has worked in performance art …

… and seriously, knows whereof he speaks. Be warned, though, you can’t talk about this stuff in front of the kids. (Yes, Ian, we’re talking about you, Jude, and the herring… ) But it was always a broad tent and, frankly, needed one from time to time (yes, Ian and Jude, we do mean you).

Nor is it even the scale or the production values. Much as Graham loves them as spectacle, the Joker’s scenes of mass or insane destruction —

— these things are still theater. We know they did not happen, and we do not assert otherwise, however much (really! ) we wish those wonderful final scenes in Inglourious Basterds actually did.

Performance art can be very — challenging. And even vomit-making, disgusting, gut-wrenching — they do, really, go with the territory.
Yes, it’s a real bear carcass, and he lived in it for two weeks. No, we don’t know either.

No. Really, No. Performance art relies, at some level, on setting up a controlled, considered tension between the real and the observed or experienced. Back in the day, this Chap’s team set up strange, alternative — or at least, skewed or shifted — realities. We arranged a strange waiter service, where the services — Lip Service, Today’s Special — may have been odd but their recipients were always grateful; offered an orientation to college life that, in the end, encouraged a skeptical view of the life that awaited college entrants; and offered ceremonious sendoffs and greetings for random rail travelers. All well and good.

But Jones plays with real people with real lives, intervenes in real situations and finds the tinfoil hat conspiracies everywhere. The Boston Marathon bombings and the Sandy Hook school shootings were deliberately staged by totalitarian pols. A Washington pizza parlor headquarters a child sex ring, also run by noted pols. He pushes this one so hard that an armed man invades, threatening staff and customers alike, looking for the (nonexistent) basement dungeon.

All the signs are Jones believes this stuff, and because he believes it, it is real. (Which, given his just-revealed mental state, makes perfect sense.) And that belief moves from what Jones does from considered, provocative art –good or bad — to paranoid fantasy. The man is no artist, except perhaps in the details of his own dangerous delusions.

The Other Chap reminds our dear readers that …

… while he may not know too much about Performance Art, he knows what he (doesn’t) like, which is why he doesn’t spend too much time considering which Performace Art pieces he enjoys and which he doesn’t.

… that’s lot of ‘doesn’t’s #justsayin

He considers the choice akin to whether you might want to die falling out of a plane, run over by a train or simply suffocated in a suicide attempt sitting in an automobile.

He recognizes that the latter would probably be the best piece of performance art – but alas – probably not the preferred choice for ‘manner of death’.

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